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Guys, we are depending on you! It’s understandable to get election fatigue, but the insane people don’t ever seem to get tired. The first article I saw this morning, not knowing who won yet, was “Sanders supporters say irregularities and cheating resulted in a Hillary win”… We need you guys to keep your spirits up to do battle with these..nutters. Granted, an election with Trump not only as a “real” candidate, but a winning one is ludicrous, but I’m not willing to cede any ground, to either side, intellectually to these far left nut bags either, so, please, get a scrip for Ativan, or mix up a batch of margaritas, tighten your seat belts and keep fighting the good fight..we’re not there yet!

katanahamon

Or my favorite concoction..the “Barbiturita”…

muselet

Guys, I have to agree. The Democratic primary process this year has become petty and childish. Charlie Pierce yesterday took a mallet to both campaigns (and, for good measure, the Purity Brigade), and deservedly so.

“The meme-ification of politics.” That’s a good way to put it.

Maybe it’s because I’m an old guy or maybe it’s just me, but I don’t feel any need to fall in love with a presidential candidate. Don’t get me wrong, I understand why it happens and frankly I’m not completely immune, but it’s something to fight against. Getting emotional about a politician inhibits healthy skepticism.

Shortening the presidential campaign would, on balance, probably be a good thing. I see a downside—outsider candidates not beloved of a party’s leadership wouldn’t get a look in, and short election seasons work best in parliamentary systems where the party is almost more important than the individual candidate—but it’s certainly worth considering, so we can all keep from burning out.

Dammit, Chez, you beat me to the 7-Eleven joke.

Ted Cruz vowed that he won’t ban dildos if elected President. True, but he’d sic his Attorney General, Jay Sekulow, on manufacturers and distributors over their clear violation of the mumble-mumble Amendment to the Constitution. If Ted Cruz told me it was hot and sunny outside in August, I’d find my umbrella.

The democratization of expertise is a scary development.

Eric Bolling’s deliberate misunderstanding of taxes is … well, deliberate. He—and the rest of Fox News Channel, come to that—is trying to rile up the rubes so they resent their neighbors and vote R, not necessarily in order of importance. It’s stupid and tiresome and incoherent, and it won’t stop until President Jenna Bush launches World War III and the cockroaches take over the world.

Bob, you’re right: Bolling and his ilk should be admitting they’re talking about raising taxes, but they’re not. What they’re saying is that the poor should have, if I may be forgiven for using this loathsome expression, “skin in the game,” because otherwise they won’t be properly appreciative or will overuse government assistance or some such codswallop.

Chez, you live in Los Angeles. The only way you’re going to freeze to death is by crawling into the freezer and closing the door.

Bob, you mean the Bernie Bro phenomenon is … a false flag? (Sorry, couldn’t resist. You went an entire show without taking a shot at Alex Jones.)

Dan Savage gets a lot of angry emails/tweets/&c, accusing him of being “in the tank” for Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton. He’s tried laughing it off, agreeing that yes, he’s in the tank for Sanders and for Clinton (he even calls himself “bi-tanktual”), but he’s currently sounding peeved and more than a little frustrated. He’s taken to begging his listeners and readers to support whoever the D nominee is because the R will be a nightmare. So far, his entreaties have had little effect.

I’m hoping the Sanders and Clinton purists are no more a real phenomenon than the PUMAs were in ’08.

Bob, correction….The Internet gives us a seemingly intimate connection with politicians but it is an illusion. Not that it makes any difference in our attachment to politicians…we feel close to them and so we get much more invested in them. But we don’t really know them so it’s not real intimacy. And while I agree this hurts us by making people behave even more childishly than before, I think the illusion is the greater danger.

Take Drumpf for example. He seems to have three kinds of supporters. The bigots who thinks he means every ugly thing he says and they agree with him. Young male libertarians who want to thwart anyone with a vagina from ever getting into the WH. And the largest group of all, folks who insist that Drumpf doesn’t mean half of what he says (and many of these people are college educated, which apparently doesn’t really affect gullibility). And if they can deny the massively important fact that he’s a bigoted idiot, then they feel like they can consider him as a legitimate candidate. They ignore his dark side and say he’ll be good for the country because he’s straightforward, not a part of the political establishment and he’s a successful businessman. Samanthe Bee interviewed a group of Drumpf supporters that illustrates this to perfection (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWlUgI4cB4M). But WHY do they think they know Herr Drumpf so well? The fake intimacy that Internet provides. They really think they know him well enough to say, “oh he’s just joking” when if they had seen such statements in print days or weeks after the event, the old fashioned way, they would never make that assessment. That fake intimacy is great so long as we have decent people running for office but when the demagogues and charismatic wannabe dictators get into the mix it fucks up people’s judgement. We’re in deep doodoo.

Aynwrong

When The Five’s audience listens to Neil Bollings talk about takers they don’t hear him say “old people” no matter how blunt he makes it. What they hear is “those people”. Virtually every opinion expressed on Fox News these days has to be run through some kind of culture war prism in order to fully under stand it. Conservatives seem to be like movies that way. They always need an easily explainable villain.

They want everything to be black or white, on or off, bumper sticker answers, etc, etc. Simple is as simple does.

ProudLiberalAlways

Bob, not to criticize, but you missed Chez’ ratfucker toward the end of the show. And a question——to whom do we write to reduce (officially) the length of our election seasons? You guys are absolutely right——–this timeframe is ludicrous! Great show! Thanx.